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>> Accused of financing an international smuggling ring responsible for the deaths of hundreds of elephants. Dubbed the Ivory Queen, Yang Fenglan pleaded not guilty in court in Tanzania along with two men, the 66-year-olds accused of running a syndicate. The smuggled tusks worth two and half million US dollars from maybe 350 elephants.

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The Chinese businesswoman has been in East African nations since the 1970s. Glan was the secretary general of the Tanzania China-Africa Business Council, and owns a popular Chinese restaurant in the capital. Prosecutors say she intentionally organized the collecting, transporting, exporting and selling of ivory government trophies weighing almost 2,000 tons in total.

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The trial will begin on the 5th of October. Ivory is turned into jewels and ornaments in places like China and Vietnam. Fast-growing Asian economies have led to a spike in what conservation groups call industrial scale poaching across Africa. Tanzania's elephant population shrank from 110,000 in 2009 to little more than 43,000 in 2014.